The Arsonist: A novel by Sue Miller

Author:Sue Miller [Miller, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780385351706
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

“I’m here to drop off the paper,” he said. He’d been parked in his car outside her house—her sister’s house—for about twenty minutes, passing the time by reading the New York Times. He’d told himself he could stay for half an hour, and here she was, with time to spare. He got out when he saw her coming down the hill, walking slowly through the long grass. The sun was in her face, so he wasn’t sure she saw him until she stopped partway down the hill, as if startled, and then, apparently recognizing him, started down again, a smile altering her face.

“That’s very kind of you,” she said now. Her hair was wet, in ringlets. She was wearing jeans and a big shirt, unbuttoned. It flapped open to reveal a black bathing suit. She carried a towel draped over one shoulder. “But I thought the deal was I was going to find the paper waiting on the porch.”

“Well, I tossed it, but I missed the porch.”

She grinned. “But I’d never have known that if you just got out and put it on the porch.”

“Then I thought I’d say hello,” he said. “You’ve been swimming?”

“My parents’ pond.” She gestured behind her. “I’m the only one who uses it, now that my sister and her kids are gone.”

They stood a moment. There was a pleasant, slightly algal smell coming from her. He said, “I wanted to ask if you’d seen Loren again, among other things.”

“I have. I should have told you.” She said he’d stopped by only two days before with a series of photographs, clearly taken by Loren himself with a not-very-good camera—shots of cars parked in a variety of situations. One, she said, was in a yard full of discarded junk and startled-looking dogs. One was in a driveway. One, slightly blurry, was taken on a road, the top of Loren’s dashboard visible in the foreground.

“I was not helpful, I’m afraid. Any one of them could have been the car I saw. I mean, they all had a version of the slant I sort of remember. I couldn’t really distinguish between them. Among them. There was only one I knew for sure wasn’t the right car.”

“Well, maybe it gave him something to start on.”

A little silence fell between them, and he was suddenly aware of the noises in the air—the faint stirring of the trees, distant birds calling. Abruptly she asked him if he wanted to come in.

“Sure. I confess I’ve been curious about this house, watching it go up.”

She led the way onto the open porch. She opened the door and indicated that he should precede her. He stepped directly into a large, open room, partially finished, the walls striped and dotted with dried white joint compound. The furniture was clearly secondhand, but somehow charming to him in its improvisational quality. A floppy bouquet sat in the middle of the table in a glass jar, small blue and white flowers. “This is pretty much it,” she said. “Two bedrooms there.

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